Politicization of the civil service and democratic backsliding

Abstract

Top-down politicization, i.e., the recruitment to and management of the civil service based on political loyalty, is potentially an important cause of incumbent-led democratic backsliding, because it increases the likelihood that governments’ attacks on democracy will succeed. Through a critical discussion of existing literature, this article shows how top-down politicization is often mistakenly underestimated as a cause due to two problematic assumptions that top-down politicization is merely a result or symptom of the successful exercise of power by authoritarian-minded governments or of deeper-seated factors that also cause democratic backsliding. Instead, the article presents a theoretical framework in the form of a stepwise guide to more systematic and valid empirical investigations of the relevance of top-down politicization in one or more cases. Focus is on whether the type of administration drove civil servants’ reactions to a government’s attack on democracy, and whether the type of administration originated from historical, contingent circumstances and reproduced itself through to the election of the authoritarian-minded government. The framework is applicable for other institutional explanations of democratic backsliding.